As the U.S. Congress considers proposals for the most comprehensive immigration reform in decades, The Selective Echo, a Salt Lake City-based news and feature blog that has extensively followed the immigration debate since 2007, has released a Kindle ebook, ‘Becoming America: Selected articles on immigration from The Selective Echo.’ Written by Mark Alvarez and Les [...]

An electoral mandate: Immigration reform is not an idle fantasy for 2013

The Selective Echo asked frequent contributor Mark Alvarez, an attorney and the state’s best informed source with regard to immigration, to pen a piece about the prospects for immigration reform after the elections. While the issue does not seem to weigh significantly in most voters’ minds among the more prominent priorities, there is plenty of judiciously studied, empirically-rich evidence that underscores how immigration reform will benefit the nation as a whole. We do think it significant in this particular piece that a well-known Utah Republican politician wisely and correctly identified the most salient obstacles to achieving consensus on how immigration reform could be shaped. Out of respect and courtesy, we do not name that particular official.